Many feelings and underlying tones exist throughout one of William Shakespeare’s most infamous sonnets, Sonnet 18. The speaker opens the poem with a rhetorical question addressed to the beloved: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (line 1). The speaker begins by asking whether he should or will compare "thee" to a summer’s day; although the question is “rhetorical”, it is, however, indirectly answered throughout the remaining parts of the poem. (SparkNote). The stability of love and its power to immortalize the poetry and the subject of that poetry is the theme. The speaker in the sonnet feels a sense of passionate love, immortality, and even a sense of joyous celebration throughout the poem.

In the sonnet, the speaker feels a strong and overwhelming sense of love towards the individual he is referring to. “Thou art more lovely and more temperate:” (line 2). This line suggests that the individual is more lovely, more constant, and that his youthful beauty is more perfect than a summer’s day; “more temperate” refers to consistency, and how days in summer are unpredictable, more violent, and less restrained. (Shakespeare’s Sonnets).

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
(lines 3-6).

These lines suggest the negativity that occurs during a typical day in summer, and act as a support for the speaker’s reasons for why his lover is more temperate. “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,” suggests how the winds in summer can become so violent that they shake and ruin the beautiful flowers that are beginning to bloom in May. “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:” uses “legal terminology” and compares the length of summer to a lease or contract that holds part of the year, but the lease is too short and has an early termination date. (Jamieson). “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,” refers...

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The following presentation of Sonnet18, one of Shakespeare's most famous, will help you visualize the rhyming pattern of the sonnets. I capitalized the last part of each line and typed a letter to the left of the line to indicate the pattern. The meaning of each line appears at right.
Sonnet XVIII (18)
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In Shakespearean sonnets (also known as English sonnets), all poems are written about one thing; love. Each sonnet consists of fourteen lines. A sonnet also consists of an iambic pentameter, a rhyme scheme in which each sonnet line consists of ten syllables. The syllables are divided into five pairs called iambs or iambic feet. An iamb is a metrical unit made up of one unstressed...

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The poem Sonnet18 was written by William Shakespeare. A poet from the 17th century who was a renowned writer for his works on theater and poems. Sonnet18 describes the power of love and immortality of the poem and himself as long as men walk the earth. He gives a message of eternal beauty and love through out the poem with his selective word choices. He describes the beauty of the poem...

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...William Shakespeare has long been regarded as one of the best writers in the English language. He is mostly known for his development of original plays, such as Romeo and Juliet, but he is also the composer of 154 sonnets. The sonnet I have chosen to analyze is sonnet18, which reads:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath...